Vote Counting in Philippines Stalls : Marcos Denies He Is Buying Time to Fix Outcome, Attacks U.S. Observers

As official tallying dragged on Saturday amid delays that may last for days, Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos denied that he and his supporters are using the time to rig the results of Friday’s special presidential election. And he charged that his opponents’ claim of victory is based on the tallies of an independent poll-watchers group he labeled as lawbreakers.

Marcos’ charges, made to foreign journalists gathered at his presidential palace Saturday evening, came just hours after a similar press conference by challenger Corazon Aquino, in which she urged President Reagan to intervene in the election by putting pressure on her 68-year-old authoritarian adversary to concede defeat.

Despite the absence of official results, Aquino has publicly proclaimed her victory over Marcos in an election she labeled Saturday as “shameful” and beset by “massive fraud and intimidation.”

Aquino, 53, a housewife who has mounted the strongest political threat Marcos has faced in his two decades as president, said she based her appeal on projections of partial returns by an independent citizens’ group.

43% of Precincts

Those returns tallied by the citizens’ group showed her leading today by a margin of 54% to 46%, based on results from 43% of the precincts. The figures were 4.9 million votes for Aquino, and 4.1 million for Marcos.

The government’s Commission on Elections showed Aquino leading 52% to 48%, based on results from 20% of the precincts. Its figures were 2.2 million for Aquino, and 2 million for Marcos.

Marcos asserted Saturday that his own figures indicate that he will win by at least 1 million votes. It was a far narrower margin than he had predicted throughout the campaign and indicated that the race was far tighter than he had expected.

In his wide-ranging appeal to the nation and the world for “patience, sobriety and tolerance,” Marcos charged that nuns and priests had broken the law by guarding the polls on Friday. He said he is “unhappy” that American congressional observers have suggested he may have engineered the delays to manipulate the results, and that he hopes the United States will not cut military and economic aid to the Philippines if it concludes that he rigged the election.

Marcos added that the widely reported fraud during Friday’s polling and the long delays in counting are “not a part of the scenario of the administration” to win the election, as suggested Saturday by Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), leader of a 20-member team sent by Reagan to observe the crucial presidential election.

When asked at a news conference what he would do if the U.S. observers declared the election unclean and unfair, Marcos asked tartly: “Are they supposed to make a judgment? I thought they were supposed to observe.”

Marcos, as he frequently has done over the last 20 years, again increased his options when asked whether a judgment of “dirty” elections could lead to his declaring the election null and void.

“If you’re trying to move toward the point as to whether I would declare the elections invalid, and either declare that no elections had been held and continue (in office) up to 1987, or call another election, these are matters which I have thought seriously about, and as of now I am trying to play it by ear,” he said.

Seeks to Discredit Foes

Marcos launched a major effort to discredit the officially sanctioned citizens’ poll-watcher group that shows Aquino running ahead--a group that Lugar on Saturday called “my eyes and my ears” in determining the cleanliness and fairness of the election.

In challenging the group--the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL)--to disclose the source of its tallies, Marcos said that its organizers are “guilty of covering up, at the very least,” adding that its half a million volunteers who monitored the polls “have been the most active and energetic in breaking the law.”

Officials of the poll-watcher group, whose volunteers were beaten, stabbed and shot to death during Friday’s polling, allegedly by members of Marcos’ ruling party, denied the charge and said that its vote count is based on official tally sheets signed and authorized by Marcos’ hand-picked Commission on Elections.

But Marcos’ allegations Saturday served only to further confuse the results of an election billed as the most crucial in Philippine history.

Of the five separate organizations set up to count the estimated 24 million votes cast nationwide Friday, only one was even close Saturday to indicating who had won the contest. That tally, the only one that is unsanctioned, is the Media Poll Watch done on government television and based on reports from government employees and Marcos loyalists.

Marcos made clear during his one-hour press conference that only one of the tallies ultimately will matter--the final canvass done by a nine-member tribunal, of which six of the members are longtime Marcos loyalists. Others include the independent poll watchers’ “quick count,” a similar operation by the Commission on Elections, the Media Poll Watch on television and the official totals from the 73 provincial canvassing centers plus those in Manila.

Before the nine-member tribunal can begin its canvassing, election officials in rural provincial capitals and Manila must first tabulate the final results. It was during that process that tens of thousands of Aquino supporters and members of the powerful Catholic Church staged 24-hour vigils in and around the counting centers Saturday and today.

“Even now, so many ballot boxes are disappearing,” Aquino said Saturday. “And I’m afraid they’re being substituted.”

There were several reports Saturday of ballot boxes being stolen or replaced with substitute boxes during the counting--especially in the Manila business district of Makati, an opposition stronghold that is ruled by a powerful mayor who is among Marcos’ avid supporters.

Throughout the nation, nuns, priests and voters held candlelight vigils outside the tallying centers, reciting prayers and, on at least two occasions, chasing after unidentified men who they said were running or driving away with ballot boxes--an attempt, they charge, to substitute fake returns for ones that would give Aquino an edge in the race.

“Freedom does not come cheap,” said Sister Lucina, a nun who remained at the counting center in the Manila district of Pasay City after the polls closed Friday afternoon.

Election officials in the district, which also is controlled by a powerful, pro-Marcos mayor, began counting votes only Saturday afternoon because of constant power failures, Sister Lucina said. She said that she hoped the counting would be honest despite the delays, but she added that she would urge Aquino supporters to remain peaceful even if Marcos is declared the victor. “We will encourage peaceful demonstrations,” she said.

But a nun in the Makati district, who asked that she not be named, said: “I think demonstrations are too tame. We should burn something.”

Marcos, when he was asked about members of the clergy who physically protected ballot boxes by holding or sitting on them, told journalists: “When you see a nun trying to grab a ballot box, then an illegal act is being committed. When you see priests, for instance, trying to participate in the voting (beyond casting their ballots), that is an illegal act. . . . And they must also be prosecuted.”

But Marcos said he probably will not charge the clergy criminally, in the interests of “reconciliation.” He added that he will permit peaceful demonstrations in the wake of the voting, and he strongly urged against violence, which he described as “a different matter.”

Aquino at her press conference also called upon her supporters to remain peaceful in the coming days. “I would not advocate violence,” she said. “I have been asking the Filipino people to stay calm.”

Still, Aquino, who phrased all of her comments Saturday as though she had won the election, added that she will never accept an official proclamation of Marcos as victor and pledged to lead daily demonstrations to protest it.

Despite her charges of massive fraud by Marcos in the election, Aquino said that she would be conciliatory toward Marcos if she is proclaimed the winner.

“I can be magnanimous in victory,” she said.

And in defeat?

“No way.”

Marcos told reporters Saturday that he, too, has no intention of ever conceding defeat to Aquino, adding that “never in the whole history of elections in the Philippines has anyone ever conceded.”

But the president also made it clear that it may be some time before either candidate has to decide. While the president did not specify how long the canvassing process may take before it is official, his aides indicated that it could take a full week before any official, final result is announced. Under the law, a proclamation must be made within 10 days of the election.